Standing Over By The Record Machine: Hackney Diamonds – is it The Rolling Stones? Or is it Memorex?

Hard to not develop a conspiracy theory that this isn’t the Stones, but an incredible simulation. But some of this rocks.

Most decidedly NOT The Rolling Stones lineup responsible for Hackney Diamonds! Brian Jones, road manager Ian Stewart, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Bill Wyman at the Kungliga tennishallen, Stockholm, Sweden, April 3, 1966. (Wikimedia Commons)

THE ROLLING STONES – Hackney Diamonds (Rolling Stone Records/Geffen/Polydor) CD/LP/Digital

For years now, I have refused to write negative reviews. I prefer being an advocate to being an assassin of hopes and dreams. I would rather cheerlead for the art I love than tear something down for the sake of tearing it down. Too many in my chosen profession these days take way too much glee in writing negative reviews. They, and the publications/websites they’re writing for, get drunk on all the clicks they generate by being so anti-, especially if it means overturning some sorta dearly-held orthodoxy. That dynamic is just as suspect as being encouraging for all the wrong reasons. 

But sometimes, a release is way too important to ignore, even if it’s not great. And let’s face it: The Rolling Stones are such an institution. Any new studio release by them is important, though none have been great since Some Girls in 1978, never mind good. And the last one of those was 1981’s Tattoo You (though there are old school Stones diehards who will insist they have sucked since Exile On Main Street/Sticky Fingers/you name it). For that matter, I know Stones-ites so hardcore, they cut them off at Aftermath, or even the first album!

Still, because they perfected the platonic ideal of a rock ‘n’ roll band – two highly interactive electric guitars, bass, drums, and a strutting bantam rooster for a singer, playing hard-driving music based on Chuck Berry/Bo Diddley/Howlin’ Wolf/Muddy Waters – and because it’s been used as a template forevermore by everyone from the New York Dolls to The Strypes, we pay attention when the Stones release a new album. Despite the law of diminishing returns that set in from Undercover onward, we pay attention. Because we love The Rolling Stones, in spite of ourselves. We keep remembering the way they used to be, how good they can be, and hoping they will change, get back to being who they were. And every time, we get Steel Wheels or Bridges To Babylon. And it never gets better. Because no producer orders Mick Jagger to actually put some care into his lyrics, to spend longer than an hour before he goes into the vocal booth to toss them off. Equally, no one recording them informs Keith Richards he already played that riff in 1970. And 1971. And 1972. And….

When will we ever fucking learn?!

God, what an ugly sleeve!

So, here’s Hackney Diamonds, the first album of original Stones music since 2005’s A Bigger Bang. Which was more solid than anything they’ve done post-Tattoo You,  but still wasn’t even as good as that. Nor is this, and it’s pretty good. But I am thinking it’s not even as good as A Bigger Bang. Yet the band sounds a lot more engaged than they have in a while.

So, why does this sound like producer Andrew Watt didn’t record the Stones, so much as log into ChatGPT and ask it to create a new Stones album? It literally sounds like an AI idea of The Rolling Stones. 

The music is too perfect at times, especially the first three tracks, on which Watt is credited as a co-writer with Mick and Keith. Which might explain why the chord progressions generally are the ones used on every pop, rock or country radio hit released the last 10 years. They certainly do not sound like typical Keith Richards chords, those five-string open G one-or-two-finger Telecaster riffs we all know. And considering we’ve already discussed how any producer tackling the Stones really needs to dissuade Keef from rewriting “Brown Sugar” yet again(?!), it’s a good idea. Except that too much of this sounds like Mick Jagger fronting fucking Matchbox 20 doing a pathetic Stones imitation. (Mind you, considering they’ve stopped playing “Brown Sugar” live, due to current demands on historic content? Perhaps the Stones need to write a “Brown Sugar” that won’t run foul of those demands?)

Is Watt to blame for the gloss? Seems hard to believe, though he is a Grammy winner who worked with folks like Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus and Ozzy Osbourne, and helmed the Iggy Pop album Every Loser that we raved about earlier this year. Somehow or other, his modern day songwriting-by-committee/glossy-radio-friendly-production aesthetics hardly bothered Iggy, and in fact invigorated him. Not so with the Stones. Most of this sounds like the Stones got an auditory version of plastic surgery, or like 20-something studio musicians trying to sound like the Stones, and still unable to differentiate between a Journey riff and a Stones riff! (“What?! They’re both old rock bands, right?!”)

The Quietus ran an excellent story a few weeks ago on Hackney Diamonds and Watt’s involvement, suggesting that a desire to be Rick Rubin, growing up in the age of brickwall mastering, and a love of Red Hot Chili Peppers was at the heart of Hackney’s dysfunction. Yes, there is a certain loss of dynamics here that can be blamed on the era wherein all music got even more compressed than on radio, to sound loud on MP3s heard through ear buds. But when I think of Rick Ruben productions, I think of what he did with bands like The Cult, which was dry, grainy, very ‘70s. Most of Hackney is way too digitally wet, overcompressed, and Matchbox 20 slick. I mean, you can’t move like Jagger unless you are Jagger.

And let’s address the elephant in the room: Most of this constitutes the first Stones record with Steve Jordan on drums. And he is good. He was in Keef’s solo outfit, The Expensive Winos, where he acquitted himself well. Charlie Watts hand picked him on his deathbed to be his successor, and Jordan sounded up to the task in the subsequent tour footage a couple of years ago. Something happened on the way to the studio for this one. Jordan has his moments, but for the most part, he sounds like Charlie Watts playing to a click track. Charlie swung. He was not metronomic. His drumming breathed. Much of the time, Jordan is rigidly metronomic. The feel is off.

It is when The Rolling Stones are allowed to be The Rolling Stones – swaggering, sloppy, raw, perhaps a bit out-of-step with modern ideas of propriety or even “rock ‘n’ roll” – that Hackney Diamonds works. Case in point: “Bite My Head Off,” featuring none other than Sir Paul McCartney joining Sir Mick and Keef and Ronnie in the album’s most punk rock moment. Wait – the Paul McCartney who not so long ago sniffed that the Stones were a mere “blues cover band,” and that his old band “cast a wider net?!” One and the same. Remember, he and his buddy John wrote a song for the Stones way back when. Perhaps he felt like playing some blues covers that day. Except that wasn’t what these elderly delinquents got up to. Watt handed Sir Paul a Hofner bass ala his old Beatles bass…except he had a fuzz box installed in its onboard circuitry! McCartney kicked it on, contributing greatly to the overall distortion on the track, driving the Stones as hard as they played on Some Girls’ attempts at keeping up with the punks, such as “Respectable.” They even give him a solo, just before Keef kicks in with some of his best Chuck Berry licks. Then there’s Tracks 7 and 8, “Mess It Up” and  “Live by the Sword.”  They are the last recordings Charlie Watts did with the Stones, and the latter features Bill Wyman back on bass, where he belongs! So yes, The Rolling Stones do make a few appearances on the new Rolling Stones album, and that’s when it gets good. 

But ya wanna know the most inspired moment on the new Rolling Stones album? It’s the final track, “Rolling Stone Blues.” For 2:42, Mick ‘n’ Keef essay the very Muddy Waters tune which gave them and Brian Jones their band name back in 1962. It’s just the Stones’ core duo, Keith raunching out that elemental riff on a blown-out small tube amp, Mick digging into that lyric between blasts on the harmonica Richards says reveals his friend’s true soul: “Well, my mother told my father/Just before I was born/’I got a boy child's comin', he's gonna be/He's gonna be a Rollin' Stone/Sure 'nough, he's a  Rollin' Stone…." Too many are reading too much into the symbolism: “Oh, it’s full circle! This must mean it’s their last record!” *rolls eyes* Cracker, please! These guys will play until all of them are six feet under! Yes, this is the Stones saying, “This is where we began – raw, primitive, roguish, playin’ the blues.” And THAT’S ALL IT IS. Enjoy the moment. It’s the rawest The Rolling Stones have been since Exile On Main Street. That it caps off their slickest album yet is a beautifully anachronistic moment. 

So, yeah. This isn’t a bad review of Hackney Diamonds. (And please spare me your obvious, unoriginal jokes about the title!) It’s a mixed one. Despite all the hype about Jagger’s urgency to get an album out, and him indeed sounding more involved than he has on record in years, much of this is not up to the Stones’ gold standard – all they cut up to Exile. Four songs do, however, making this a far more listenable enterprise than any Stones album in ages. So yeah, Hackney Diamonds is a damned good EP, with a buncha filler. That’s probably the best we can hope for at this point. I’ll take it.

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